


three heroes walk into a bar

by spidermooned (softlyblue)



Series: Real Heroes of New York 'verse [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Babies Deal With Feelings, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Michelle Jones takes none of your shit today, Team Red - Humans Or Disaster Gremlins With Human Skinsuits?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 11:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17263325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/spidermooned
Summary: “Hi,” says Peter, one unremarkable Wednesday in late February. Michelle and Ned are sitting in Peter’s room; May’s got plenty used to them being around even without her nephew, and at this point Michelle’s more familiar with Peter’s apartment than she is her own house. He’s crawling through the window to greet them, his mask already balled up in his fist, and there’s a big splot of blood blooming on his lip. “Homework, or Star Wars?”“First Aid,” says Ned. “First aid. Then homework. Then Star Wars.”Michelle Jones is not happy with the way Peter's colleagues look out for his personal safety. And because Peter obviously can't be trusted to look after himself, seems like she's gotta do it for him.





	three heroes walk into a bar

**Author's Note:**

> i returneth

Her friendship with Peter Parker and Ned Leeds started out of a weird fascination with the two of them. (Back in freshman year when, Michelle will admit, she was a bit of a bitch.) Parker and Leeds are - were - too geeky even for Midtown Tech, recognised  _ school of the geeks,  _ and it’d been a bit like getting a front row seat to a spectacular car crash of social interaction. 

Except Parker and Leeds are  _ nice  _ dorks. Geeks, nerds, whatever. They invite her to Parker’s house when they’re building their five-hundred piece Lego sets, and they invite her to Leeds’ house when they’re doing their movie marathons. Friendship by prolonged contact. 

And then there’s Parker’s -  _ Peter’s,  _ he doesn’t like it when she calls him Parker -Spiderman thing. 

 

“Hi,” says Peter, one unremarkable Wednesday in late February. Michelle and Ned are sitting in Peter’s room; May’s got plenty used to them being around even without her nephew, and at this point Michelle’s more familiar with Peter’s apartment than she is her own house. He’s crawling through the window to greet them, his mask already balled up in his fist, and there’s a big splot of blood blooming on his lip. “Homework, or Star Wars?”

“First Aid,” says Ned. “First aid. Then homework. Then Star Wars.”

“What?” Peter frowns, and his eyebrows go all knotted and his nose scrunches up - he drops to the ground, scooping a sweater from the floor and burrowing into it, covering up the skintight red and blue. “What’re you on about?”

Michelle taps his lip. Maybe a bit too hard. “You look like you went one on one with a hooker. And lost.”

“Hey,” Peter squints and then turns bright red and sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, “No - I heal fast. Daredevil punched me.”

_ “Daredevil!”  _ Ned squeaks. Michelle’s beginning to think Peter namedrops heroes just to see Ned have a million miniature heart attacks while breathing their name and clutching his chest. 

“Punched you,” Michelle says. 

Peter shrugs. “He’s teaching me how to fight in the dark. Homework or Star Wars?” 

“Star Wars,” Michelle says after a while. Ned’s still rolling around on the floor, and Peter’s got a funny look on his face, because he’s  _ weird  _ when people point out that he isn’t infallible. “Star Wars, then homework.”

When he comes to school the next day, his mouth’s a bit redder than usual, but other than that you’d never know there was a mark there. 

Huh. 

 

Michelle carries a taser in her bag and a folding Swiss knife in her pocket, because she lives in a city where people calling themselves Doctor Octopus regularly break out of high-security prisons and wreak havoc upon innocent civilians. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Tony Stark or Thor or whatever; it’s just that she’d rather stay alive in the fifteen minutes it takes them to wake up and fly to the cause of the chaos, than wait for them unarmed and die while they’re putting on their press faces, or whatever. 

Also, she likes to wave the taser in Flash Thompson’s face when he gets a question wrong in decathlon practice. God, does it feel good to see him squirm. 

“This is not how this usually goes,” says Deadpool. He looks faintly amused, or as faintly amused as a mask can look, and his hands are in the air, his eyes narrowed in on the knife Michelle’s waving at him. “You know I, like, totally saved you from that guy?”

“No, you didn’t,” Michelle says. “I was going to. You did before I could. And I want a  _ word  _ with you, anyway, so shut up and listen.”

“I am contractually and scriptuactually obligated to never shut up,” Deadpool tells her, but she pokes him in the shoulder with the point of her pocket knife and he screams (she’s pretty sure it doesn’t hurt, but it soothes her anger a little), backing up against the wall. “Sorry. Miss Scary Woman Lady. Zipping lips now.”

“You’re friends with Peter,” Michelle says. 

She almost feels sorry for the guy. Even under the mask she can see him panic, and his arms start flailing against the wall. “Who? Who? Peter? Oh, sure, I know a Peter, he’s like… fifty, Asian-American, lives down in Minnesota with his gay lover and ten horses-”

“Parker,” Michelle says. 

_ “Parker,  _ Parker, Park her where, who is she, that’s an awfully misogynistic thing for a young lady to say-”

“I’m his friend too, dumbass,” Michelle swats his shoulder with the flat of the knife. “Shut up. I’m threatening you.”

“Oh, you’re  _ MJ,”  _ Deadpool says, and then - horrifically - one of his masked eyes drops in a wink. “Oh, I know all about you. Peter says-”

“Peter’s falling asleep in class,” Michelle interrupts and she isn’t turning red, she definitely isn’t, “And I know it’s because he’s out with you and Daredevil, and Daredevil punched him in the face the other day, and he got blood on my t-shirt.”

“You’re worried about Pete,” Deadpool leers at her, still staying obediently behind her knife. He’s so  _ broad.  _ He could probably kill her in a second, but he isn’t, because he’s either crazy or  _ way  _ too eager to get a scoop on Peter. 

“I am not,” she says. Not turning red. “I’m his group partner in, like, every class because he has no friends and if he keeps falling asleep and getting punched in conspicuous places then his grades’ll drop and I’ll never become President, so fuck you.”

“I’ll be sure to  _ pass on the message,”  _ Deadpool says, innuendo practically dripping from his voice. “Pete will be  _ so  _ glad we had this little talk.”

_ “Don’t tell him!”  _

“I won’t tell him,” Deadpool says, taking the knife between finger and thumb, “Provided you learn how to  _ actually  _ stab and or maim someone that’s attacking you.”

Michelle holds out her taser, and demonstrates just how good she is on Deadpool, and he lies on the ground, spasming, and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs until he’s almost sick. 

“Don’t let Spiderman get fucked up,” she tells him, and kicks his knee, and walks off like people do in films. Slowly, away from explosions. Usually while putting sunglasses on. She hasn’t got sunglasses, and she almost steps on a feral pigeon-cat crossbreed, but the overall effect is reached - message well sent, in her opinion. 

 

“Hey, squirt. Stop squirming.”

On Thursdays, her mom has date nights with Martin from her work, and Michelle babysits Carol and Tom, Martin’s two little kids. They’re seven and eight, which is basically old enough to do everything themselves, and so mostly it’s Michelle playing Mario Kart with the two of them and trying her best to win and  _ utterly failing  _ because Tom and Carol are  _ little cheats.  _

“I’m not squirming,” Carol says, squirming around. “I’m wriggling. I’m a  _ worm,  _ Michelle.”

“Stop wriggling, then,” Michelle still has to put them to bed, because Tom insists on having a story read to him and Carol always pretends she’s too old, but stays wide-eyed and awake while Michelle’s reading it anyway. “What story?”

“The one about the rabbits,” Tom suggests. “The  _ alien rabbits.”  _

“The one about the worms,” Carol says. 

“How about worm rabbits?”

_ “Yeah!”  _

Michelle takes her notebook out of her bag and opens to a page near the middle, propping it up so neither of them can see the blank pages. She’s managed to convince both Carol and Tom that her notebook is an expensive ancient relic of Egypt, full of the stories the pharaohs used to read to each other, and Tom (according to her mom, anyway) has been telling Martin  _ all  _ about how cool Michelle is. Which is, in turn, helping with that whole situation. Man, Michelle really is great. 

“Worm rabbits,” Carol prompts, her fists curled in the blanket. Tom makes a little squeaky excited noise. 

“This story is called  _ The Adventures of Kiki The Worm Rabbit,”  _ Michelle says importantly. “Kiki was from a planet very far from this one called Saxon Ten, and he was part of the pirate astronaut ship, the  _ Spider Web.  _ He used to rob from rich, corrupt alien governments and give out the money and the food-”

“Chocolate-”

“And the chocolate, yeah, to the poor aliens, and they’d all cheer when they saw the  _ Spider Web  _ in the sky, sailing amongst the stars looking for more rich people to tax. Kiki was special, though, because he was both a worm and a rabbit, and sometimes his ears wriggled, even though he was all covered in fur.”

And the kids are asleep in half an hour, and when Michelle checks the TV they’re playing the last half of that  _ Tony Stark, Iron Man  _ biopic, the one that came out over summer starring Ryan Gosling as a weird, bearded young Tony. She plays it on mute, tucks her feet underneath her, and checks her phone. 

**ned:** _ so explain about decimal fractions and their use in chemistry pls  _

Which she can sort out later. Ned’s smart, just lazy. But - 

**peter:** _ hey can i come over?  _ _   
_ **peter:** _ sorry its just i  _ _   
_ **peter:** __ think youre closer 

Michelle frowns at her screen; on the TV set, Ryan Gosling has an intimate sex scene with Michelle Jones as Pepper Potts. 

**me:** _ im not at my place im at my moms boyfriends  _ _   
_ **me:** _ suburbia lmao  _   
**me:** __ are u close? 

**peter:** _ can u send me the location? sorry  _

**me:** _ [location sent]  _

And Michelle finds herself worrying her bottom lip, picking at the knots in her clothes, and scrolling through Twitter mindlessly like it’ll help her forget how Spiderman’s potentially out there, potentially  _ hurt,  _ and she’s in here watching a badly-acted Tony Stark angst about how his father didn’t love him enough. It’s sort of weird, watching it, when Michelle’s met the  _ real  _ Tony Stark and he isn’t half this emo. 

(Peter’s told her, in a grinning whisper, that Tony Stark only gets emotions when he’s tired, or when someone cries and he thinks it’s his fault. Peter says it’s  _ great  _ for getting out of lab work, and he can turn on the tears like a tap.) 

When someone knocks on the door, Michelle can’t leap up fast enough from the sofa. It’s okay. Nobody can see her and judge the break in her cool, composed exterior. 

“Hey,” Peter says, leaning against the doorframe; he’s in one of his ridiculously baggy sweaters again, one so speckled in holes that Michelle suspects it isn’t actually his.  _ And  _ her scarf, wrapped three times around his neck, and a pair of sweatpants that stop around mid-calf. The Spiderman boots protrude from the cuffs of the pants, and he looks utterly ridiculous. 

And pale. 

“Hey,” Michelle says, raising an eyebrow, making sure to scan up and down so Peter knows how disappointed she is. “You forget you weren’t made of solid steel again?”

“I never forget,” he limps past her when she lets him, and she can  _ tell  _ how much he’s struggling not to show; the fact that it  _ is  _ means he must be hurt pretty bad. 

Fucking Parker. Fucking Spiderman. 

“Tea,” she says shortly, and he sinks onto the sofa with a groan. “Tea. Tell me who to fight.”

“Wade said you fought him in a back alley and stole his innocence,” Peter says; his eyes flutter shut for a moment, his face cast in the blue light of Ryan Gosling’s fake arc reactor. “He says you’re scary.  _ He  _ says you should be a superhero.”

“I didn’t do anything to him,” Michelle punches the kettle on with more than her usual ferocity. “Did he, what, punch you? You didn’t duck fast enough? You got shot in the knee by the Punisher?”

“I fell off the Statue of Liberty,” Peter says sleepily. 

_ “What the fuck?”  _

It turns out to be on the news and Michelle makes him watch it, sort of like those pictures on Twitter of dogs with signs around their necks shaming them for doing dumb things. The footage rolls, Spiderman clinging to Johnny Storm, fighting weird buzzing robot things with the Human Torch and - Reed Richards, cool, okay, and then the newsreader coughs and the camera zooms in on the red and blue dot falling off the statue, grabbing onto one of the buzzing robots, and then splashing into the river. 

“Peter,” Michelle says, and kicks his good knee. Peter grunts. “Oi.  _ Oi.  _ Don’t be an absolute idiot. You aren’t Johnny Storm.”

“No shit I ain’t Johnny,” Peter mumbles. His face is smushed up against one of the sofa cushions, and it makes him look like a (pale, unhealthy) hamster. “I’m  _ Spiderman.” _

Michelle snorts, but Peter’s mouth is dropping open and his eyes are dropping shut. She’ll have to wake him before her mom and Martin come back, and if Carol and Tom wake up they’ll ask about a million questions, but for now she drops the sofa throw over his shoulders and watches the TV footage of him falling, over and over and over, and thinks. 

 

“I’ve heard of you,” Hawkeye tells her. “Hi.” 

“Good,” Michelle says. She’s found Hawkeye in a dumpster near Martin’s house, and she’s coming from picking the kids up from school. (Her mom says her and Martin are headed in  _ the right direction  _ and Michelle’s never been happier for her. Martin’s a nice guy, an investment banker with actual money, someone who doesn’t seem like he smacks anyone around, someone who  _ likes  _ Michelle and buys her anthropology books for her birthday.) (Plus, his kids are cool.) 

Behind her, clinging to her legs, Tom and Carol tug on her hands. “That’s a superhero,” Tom tells her, like she doesn’t know. 

“Gimme a hand out,” Hawkeye flops out at her. “Peter told me about you - ow, ow, fu-  _ fudge,  _ sorry. Kids. Fack. Fleck. Flock.”

“Not making it any better,” Michelle tells him, taking him by the elbow and tugging him out. Peter’s told him about her. Peter told Wade about her, too, although she’d sort of thought that was just Deadpool talking shit because he’s Deadpool and that’s sort of his thing. 

“Michelle,” Carol says.  _ “Michelle.” _

“If he tries to fight us, I have a zappy thing,” Michelle shows them the taser in her bag and Tom claps and Carol looks less like she’s about to cry. 

“I won’t fight you,” Hawkeye says.

The two kids ignore him. Michelle is  _ way  _ cooler than some homeless guy in a purple t-shirt, an arrowhead sticking out of his thigh  _ wait what the fuck.  _

When Hawkeye sees Michelle looking, he rubs the back of his neck all sheepish. “Aw, arrow. Listen, MJ, right? You’re Peter’s girl?” 

“I’m nobody’s nothing,” Michelle says haughtily. 

Hawkeye holds up his arms, all, “Woah, yeah, sorry-” and he falls back against the wall, startlingly bloodless, one hand flying down to hold his leg. “Yeah, uh, can you do me a favour and call this number? It’s, uh. Please. Or I think I might die and I’ll be  _ so  _ fu- fudging embarrassed.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Michelle dials the number on his palm with one hand, since both of Martin’s kids are clinging to her other one. It rings three times, and then there’s a click and a  _ “Hello?”  _

“Gimme, gimme,” Hawkeye reaches. “Gimme-” 

_ “I hear Clint,”  _ says the girl on the other end of the line.  _ “Lemme guess. You found him in a trash bag or something, he commandeered your phone, and he’s bleeding out from some vital body part. Yeah?” _

“Yeah,” Michelle scans Hawkeye up and down. “Right on all three. Dumpster, he begged, and upper thigh. Looks pretty gruesome.” 

_ “Fucking hell. Okay, where are you? And can you do me a massive favour and stay with the idiot so he doesn’t kill himself or something before I get there?”  _

“Yeah, sure,” Michelle rattles off the street name and then hangs up, shoving her phone into her pocket. “Now I got you here, Mister Hawkeye, I got something to tell you.” 

“Don’t kill me,” Hawkeye says. The kids giggle into the back of Michelle’s coat. 

“I don’t wanna kill you. I just want to have a  _ word.”  _

 

Michelle meets Peter and Ned at Peter’s place, although Ned’s going to be late, and so she spends a pleasant half-hour with Peter and his aunt, making spaghetti and meatballs and watching Peter fiddle with a rubber band around his wrist. He snaps it, and wraps it cat’s-cradle around his fingers, and then goes back to snapping it again, and May says nothing. Just ruffles his hair as she passes. He begins to look more and more like a windswept bush and less like himself, until May’s ruffling and he’s whining  _ Ma-ay  _ and Michelle finds herself grinning, and laughing when May winks at her. 

“So,” Peter says to her.  _ Snap snap.  _ “Kate says you’ve been texting.”

“I found her Hawkeye in a dumpster, and we’ve bonded over being friends with disastrous vigilantes,” Michelle says. 

Kate Bishop is nice. Frighteningly competent, but nice. She complains about her dad a lot, and about Clint, and in return listens when Michelle complains about how her mom and Martin refuse to get a move on, and about how ridiculous it is that Peter won’t stop doing ridiculous things and, like,  _ almost dying. _

“That’s cool,” Peter says. “Kate’s - nice. We had pizza once, with Clint and… Wade and a few others. After the aliens in Hell’s Kitchen. Celebratory not-dead pizza.” 

“Best kind, if you ask me,” May drops a kiss on his forehead as she passes. “Michelle, would you reach us down some plates?”

“Sure,” she goes, tucking her hair behind her ear, and when she looks back Peter’s staring at her, snapping the dumb band against his wrist - it’s starting to redden and bruise - and Michelle pretends she hasn’t seen the look. 

 

Spiderman is the one that kicks through the plastic windows of the public bus, because of  _ course  _ he is. Michelle’s with the kids again, because her mom and Martin are going to the fanciest shopping streets in New York to  _ discuss some private things, okay, honey?  _ Which Michelle takes to mean that her mom will be coming home with a sparkling diamond on her hand and a smile on her face. 

This would all be fine, if some crazy guy, possibly a robot, in a green cloak and a creepy mask hadn’t descended upon the street their bus was going down, and had declared that unless someone surrendered Sue Storm to him, he’d kill everyone in New York. 

“Spiderman!” Tom yells. 

_ “MJ?”  _ Peter coughs, and then lowers his voice. “Fear not, citizens-”

“She’s called Michelle, actually,” Carol tells him. “But it’s okay if you don’t know. You’re Spiderman.”

“I am here - uh, yeah, kid. Michelle,” Spiderman looks askance at her. “I didn’t know you had siblings.”

Out through the hole he’s battered in the window, most of the rest of the people on the bus are escaping. Once out there, Michelle can hear Hawkeye (the old one, not Kate) telling everyone where to go and where to hide -  _ the Four are coming soon to kick his ass, but don’t worry, you got the Man Without Fear watching your building in the meantime.  _

“You guys better get outta here,” Peter says, dropping the bad Batman voice and crouching until he’s level with Tom and Carol. “Follow your sister, yeah? And MJ - uh, Daredevil’s out there. He’s. He got shot in the shoulder so we’re making him protect the civilians.”

_ “Michelle makes her friends call her MJ,”  _ she hears Carol hissing at Tom.  _ “I heard that boy the other night call her that.”  _

Michelle refuses to flush. “Shot in the shoulder,” she says flatly. “And what did  _ you  _ do? Break your neck? Crack your foot?”

“Got here late,” Peter says. He ducks his head, looking embarrassed even though the mask’s hiding pretty much everything. “Just - I’ll help you, okay? Don’t get hurt.”

“Hah. Rich of you to say,” Michelle bites at him. “Hold my hand, guys.”

Peter lifts first Tom, then Carol out of the bus window with all the gentleness and care of someone handling baby kittens. “They’re my mom’s boyfriend’s kids,” Michelle explains, as he holds her forearms, helps her step out. “I babysit them most nights. Remember that time you came to his house?”

“Oh, yeah,” Peter smiles and his hand folds around her elbow. “You good? I’ll - yeah, Clint’s gone, I’ll show you guys to where Ma- I mean, Daredevil. Where Daredevil is. I’ll. I’ll come get you after. I’d tell you to run, but Doom is - like. Not like. Someone you wanna get anywhere near enough to threaten with a taser.”

“So  _ you  _ shouldn’t be anywhere near him, either,” Michelle says dryly. It’s not like she has a death wish or anything - she just doesn’t get it. Why Peter gets to count himself out of the protection he gives to everyone else during all the weird supernatural shit, all the paranormal life-or-death events that happen to New York every other month. 

“I’m-” Peter breaks off when he gets to an open storefront, blocked off by an upside down taxi. “Okay, yeah, in here? Ma-  _ Daredevil’s  _ in here, uh. I’ll see you after Johnny shows up and blows Doom back to Latveria, I guess.”

Michelle punches him on the shoulder just before he ducks away. “Stay safe, asshole,” she tells him, and he salutes her and then he’s away, webbing himself back into the sky. 

Dumbass.

“You’re friends with  _ Spiderman,”  _ Tom says. 

“That’s so  _ cool.”  _

And then a burning car tyre hits the street five feet away from them, and Michelle grabs a hand in each of hers and dives into the store.

There’s around thirty people here, huddled around the stands, including a guy with a name tag that’s presumably the owner, or his son, or something like that. Nobody’s talking very loudly, so over the noises of crashes and bangs and Hawkeye swearing outside, there’s the gentle susurrus of a worried shopful of people. Pacing around and around is a man in red, the two Ds emblazoned on his chest; the first of Peter’s dubious new friends. Daredevil.

“Hello,” Michelle says, as venomously as she can without swearing, “I’m  _ MJ.  _ Peter’s probably mentioned me.”

“Oh, fuck,” Daredevil says. “Don’t kill me.”

“He said a bad word, Michelle,” Tom says sweetly, pulling on the end of Michelle’s shirt, “Can you poke him with your zapper?”

“Don’t poke me with your zapper,” Daredevil asks. He  _ does  _ have a bad shoulder, Michelle can see, his arm pulled back and his whole body folded around it somewhat.

“You’re setting a bad example for him,” Michelle says, propping her hands on her hips, flanked by Tom and Carol behind her. “One time he tried to come to school with three cracked ribs and my friend had to sit on his feet so we could ring Mr Stark.”

“He heals fast,” Daredevil says, and grabs at his shoulder. “We-”

_ “Listen,  _ man, I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but Spiderman’s got friends, and they’re pretty damn sick of him coming back to them with bits missing. Cut it out.”

“You think we don’t know that? What, we don’t count? Every time he breaks an arm, we cheer?”

“You punched him in the face,” Michelle says coldly.  _ “You  _ did.”

“I punched him in the face so he’ll know to duck next time someone else tries to punch him. And they won’t be pulling their punches, not like I was. And if all it takes is one bloody lip and that means he isn’t gonna die next time, well, I dunno,” Daredevil’s own lip is covered in blood, a bust lip from chewing it too much, “I dunno. Seems like a pretty good exchange to me.”

“He gets hurt,” Michelle says. She feels like all the wind’s been abruptly stolen from her sails. 

“Yeah,” Daredevil says. “It isn’t fun. Nobody does it on purpose. It doesn’t feel  _ good.  _ But it’s nice knowing that when you come home, yeah, someone’s gonna be there with a drink and some company. You’re his friend, MJ. That’s always gonna help the dumbass when he does something really stupid.”

“I don’t like you,” she tells him, out of a lack of anything else to say. Pointedly, she marches Tom and Carol over to the other end of the shop to wait for Peter again. 

(Her mom’s texted; apparently they have something to talk to the kids about, and she hopes Michelle got home before that horrible attack in Queens.)

(Michelle texts  _ we’re safe,  _ which is the best she can get for now.) 

(And right before the police come, and Iron Man and Captain America and all, Daredevil pats her on the shoulder and gruffly grunts something that sounds a little like a  _ thank you  _ but might be a  _ fuck you  _ depending on how forgiving she’s feeling. For the sake of Peter she assumes it’s the first.) 

 

“I have people looking out for me,” Peter says. Ned’s keeping watch by the door, and Michelle’s slapping layers of cottony gauzy stuff over an oozing gash on his shoulder, holding it in place with an entire roll of medical tape. “I mean - like.”

Michelle raises her eyebrow at him. 

“Kate says Clint says Wade says you’re terrorizing them,” he blurts out. 

“Just because  _ some people  _ don’t know when to  _ stop  _ because they are  _ literally sixteen years old  _ and other people who are  _ adults  _ should have  _ better sense-”  _

Peter smiles at her, all off-kilter and sheepish, and Michelle finds herself uncharacteristically struck silent. “I am sorry,” he says, and tries to move his shoulder, “And I don’t - so much, anymore. But. But thank you? For. I dunno. Saying that to them. Even if Wade does want to move to Ireland to get away from you now.”

“You’re welcome,” Michelle says stiffly, and then kicks his ankle because she doesn’t want to be caught having emotions and shit, and also she’s pretty sure Ned’s watching with melodramatic tissues pressed to his eyes like an  _ asshole.  _

 

The joke starts thus: Hawkeye, Deadpool, and Daredevil all walk into a bar.

“She got me,” Clint says. 

“Pete’s girl,” Wade pats his shoulder sympathetically. “God bless your soul.”

“She ain’t nobody’s nothing,” Clint says, with the voice of someone parroting a lesson beat into them. “She’s  _ scary.  _ Her and Kate exchanged phone numbers. They text, sometimes. What the fuck am I meant to do when Pete’s girl and my girl start talking? I’m not strong enough for  _ one  _ girl.” 

“Stop calling Kate your  _ girl,”  _ Matt says. 

“Not the point, man. Fuck. That  _ Michelle.  _ Em-Jay,” Clint stares sadly into his drink. “Fucking hell. I felt like I was gonna die. What does Pete  _ see  _ in her?” 

Wade pats him on the shoulder again. “Sometimes a guy just needs a girl yell violently at him and consensually call him a dumbass. You’ll understand when you’re older.” 

**Author's Note:**

> yooo twitters r like @cthulhu_twt or @spidermooned <3 hope u enjoyed, stay put for more FUN TIMES


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